Pretending

With every age and stage comes so many new changes, most of them fun and exciting, and some challenging. I have had so much fun lately watching and playing with McKenna while she pretends. She has been a big pretender since she was really young, but has really started pretend more and more the last month or so.

Her latest "game" is playing bye-bye. She gets her purse (which she usually puts her whole tea set in and her ring), then she has to get her jacket (which is usually a pair of pants or shirt that she puts her arm through), sometiems she decides she needs a bib on and she goes and gets a bib and velcros it on, and then she yells bye-bye with the cutest inflection in her voice. I ask her where she is going and usually it's to go see dada. Then I tell her "okay I'll see you later" and she runs over with her arms open wide and says "Hug, Hug." After hugging and giving me a kiss she goes to the door and acts like she is leaving, the whole time yelling "bye, bye." Then she runs back in the room where I am and says "back" meaning she is back. I tell her hi and that I missed her so much and then it starts all over again.

Since we are going to be gone for Christmas McKenna was able to open her presents from Grandma Uschi (Brandon's grandma) and Great Uncle Aaron (Brandon's uncle.) She loved all of her presents, but has latched on to her tea set from Uschi and her teddy bear from Aaron. Since she got the gifts last week she has played "tea time" every day. Often with Grammy over Skype (videoconferencing on the computer) giving her bites to eat and tea to drink. The bear often has to go where she is and the other morning she decided he needed to eat breakfast with her so daddy put him in her highchair with her. Here are a couple of pictures of her fedding her bear eggs.